'Tis the Season to be Jewish

Tag Archives: Jews and Chinese Food

The Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD), a “new kind of museum that brings the world of food to life with exhibits you can taste, touch, and smell” is hosting an immersive culinary and cultural experience CHOW x JUDAISM to explore the nexus between Jews, Chinese Food, and Christmas! Or, in MOFAD’s own words: “to learn more about how these two communities found a seat at the same table.”

CHOW x JUDAISM is on Friday, December 21, 2018 from 6:30 pm until 9:00 pm at MOFAD Lab, 62 Bayard Street in Brooklyn, New York, and will feature:

See also: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/21/18151903/history-jews-chinese-food-christmas-kosher-american

Also, see AKosherChristmas Blog Post “We Eat Chinese Food on Christmas” (December 15, 2015) and, of course, the preeminent resource on American Jews and Christmas: A Kosher Christmas: ‘Tis the Season to be Jewish by Joshua Eli Plaut, Ph.D. (which is available on amazon.com at https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=a+kosher+christmas).

Jews who eat at Chinese Restaurants on Christmas across the United States form a loosely extended yet temporal community that takes Jewish identity seriously. It didn’t take long for one enterprising, forward –thinking and self-proclaimed Chinese food enthusiast to conceive of the idea of adding entertainment to the eating experience. Quite simply, it started as a joke. In October 1993, a stand-up comedian named Lisa Geduldig, who resides in San Francisco, California, was hired to perform at what she thought was a women’s cabaret evening at a comedy club in South Hadley, Massachusetts. When she arrived at the venue, Lisa realized that she had, in fact, been hired to tell Jewish Jokes at the Peking Garden Club, a Chinese restaurant. On her website, Lisa Geduldig relates how she told an old summer camp friend about the irony of combining an evening of Jewish humor and Chinese food.

In San Francisco, a couple of months after this conversation, Lisa inaugurated the first Kung Pao Kosher Comedy as an evening of Jewish stand-up comedy in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas. When Lisa conceived of the event, she hoped to create a hermetic Jewish environment where guests could focus on Jewish tradition and identity and bypass Christmas. “Jewish people feel alienated that time of year and just like to have something to celebrate instead of hiding under the covers until the end of December…I mean you get very Christmas-ed to death from November 27 on…You just feel like a stranger in a strange land for the entire month of December.”

Lisa’s vision has proven highly successful. Since its inception, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy has increased every year, and now, after more than two decades, Jews consider it to be an annual Christmastime tradition. It is a seminal event in modern comedic performance focused on Christmas. At Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, which spans 6 performances over 3 days and attracts thousands of attendees, Jewish stand-up comedians, some hailing from the Borsht Belt, such as Shelly Berman, David Brenner, Henny Youngman, and Freddie Roman have all headlined, joking about Christmas and Hanukkah in ways that would have made their immigrant ancestors blush. Also represented is a younger generation of comedians who range in age from twenty to forty-five, such as Lisa Kron in 2003 and Jonathan Katz in 2009. Lisa Geduldig is aware that the world of comedy historically has been dominated by men. It is a badge of honor for her that new female comedians are making their mark and are present on the stage at Kung Pao Kosher Comedy.

Lampooning both Hanukkah and Christmas bypasses tension often experienced by Jews for being different and marginalized during the holiday season. Comedians raise awareness of the challenge of having to recognize Christmas as important to American society while at the same time desiring to escape its influence. At Kung Pao, humor is the chosen vehicle employed by a Jewish minority to confront a holiday season dominated by the Christian majority. Humor is a weapon comedians use to take cultural revenge on Christmas, thereby symbolically robbing the holiday of its ability to intimidate. One repeat patron, a 40-something doctor explained ”I am an outsider. It is someone else’s birthday party and I’m not invited. ..we all commiserated about living through and being an outsider for one month a year…I will attend Kung Pao show next year because I belong to the group…”

Kung Pao Kosher Comedy has become a model for other similar Christmas Eve Jewish comedy banquets and has set the trend for Jewish social gatherings across the country. Over the years, Jewish organizations and comedy clubs in American cities have copied Lisa Geduldig’s event format by hosting a Christmas Eve dinner of Chinese food followed by Jewish a comedy show; however, none of them have the staying power of Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, an American tradition spanning twenty-three years!

Until recently those American who rejected Christmas, including Jews, were considered outsiders. By joining together on Christmas at entertainment venues across the United States to celebrate and proclaim Jewish identity, Jews achieve the special status of insider, representing those who seek alternative, acceptable means to celebrate the holiday season As one young Jewish woman observed while waiting to enter a Kung Pao Kosher Comedy performance, “I want to be with other Jews celebrating, doing something that’s not Christmas, that’s ‘un-Christmas.’ I want to be an insider, not an outsider. Being here at Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, I don’t feel like an outsider.”

The tradition of Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas Eve is so pervasive that it has been the catalyst for many a Yuletide parody. Erev Christmas was written by veteran storyteller Bruce Marcus and Lori Factor (now Factor-Marcus) and originally published by The Boston Globe newspaper in 1993. (The version that appears below was slightly revised in September of 2011). These two Boston-area Jews chronicled their personal Christmas Eve quest for Chinese food with some measure of comic license, adding to the large canon of verse satirizing the well-known poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clemente Clarke Moore.

Erev Christmas [Christmas Eve]

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and we, being Jews,

my girlfriend and me – we had nothing to do.

The Gentiles were home, hanging stockings with care,

secure in their knowledge St. Nick would be there.

But for us, once the Chanukah candles burned down,

there was nothing but boredom all over town.

The malls and the theaters were all closed up tight;

there weren’t any concerts to go to that night.

A dance would have saved us, some ballroom or swing,

but we combed through the papers; there wasn’t a thing.

Outside the window sat two feet of snow;

with the wind-chill, they said, it was fifteen below.

And while all I could do was sit there and brood,

my gal saved the night and called out: “Chinese food!”

So we ran to the closet, grabbed hats, mitts, and boots –

to cover our heads, our hands and out foots.

We pulled on our jackets, all puffy with down,

and boarded the T, bound for Chinatown.

The train nearly empty, it rolled through the stops,

while visions of wantons danced through our kopfs.

We hopped off at Park Street; the Common was bright,

with fresh-fallen snow and the trees strung with lights,

then crept through “The Zone” with its bums and its thugs,

and entrepreneurs pushing ladies and drugs.

At last we reached Chinatown, rushed through the gate,

Past bakeries, markets, shops and cafes,

in search of a restaurant: “Which one? Let’s decide!”

We chose “Hunan Chazer,” and ventured inside.

Around us sat others, their platters piled high

with the finest of fine foods their money could buy:

There was roast duck and fried squid (sweet, sour and spiced),

dried beef and mixed veggies, lo mein and fried rice.

There was whole fish and moo shi and shrimp chow mee foon,

and General Gau’s chicken and ma po tofu…

When at last we decided, and the waiter did call,

we said: “Skip the menu!” and ordered it all.

And when in due time the food was all made,

it came to the table in a sort of parade.

Before us sat dim sum, spare ribs and egg rolls,

and four different soups, in four great, huge bowls.

And chicken wings! Dumplings! And beef teriyakis!

And fried scallion pancakes—‘cause they’re kinda like latkes.

The courses kept coming, from spicy to mild,

and higher and higher toward the ceiling were piled.

And while this went on, we were aware

every diner around us had started to stare.

Their jaws hanging open, they looked on unblinking;

some dropped their teacups, some drooled without thinking.

So much piled up, one dish, then another,

my girlfriend and I couldn’t see one another!

Now we sat there, we two, without proper utensils,

while they handed us something that looked like two pencils.

We poked and we jabbed till our fingers were sore,

and half of our dinner wound up on the floor.

We tried – How we tried! – but, sad truth to tell,

ten long minutes later and still hungry as heck,

we swallowed our pride, feeling vaguely like dorks,

and called to our waiter to bring us two forks.

Then we fressed and we feasted, we slurped and we munched;

we noshed and we supped, we breakfast and lunched.

We ate near to bursting and drank down our teas,

and barely had room for the fortune cookies.

But my fortune was perfect; it summed up the mood

when it said: “Pork is kosher, when it’s in Chinese food.”

And my girlfriend—well…she got a real winner;

Hers said: ‘Your companion will pay for the dinner.”

Our bellies were full and at last it was time

to travel back home and write down this rhyme

of our Chinatown trek (and to privately speak

about trying to refine our chopstick technique).

The MSG spun ‘round and ‘round in our heads,

and we tripped and we laughed, and gaily we said,

as we schlepped all our leftovers home through the night:

“Good yom tov to all—and to all a Good Night!

This parody lampoons several recurring themes pervasive in the Jewish affinity for Chinese food: the Jewish penchant for Chinese food on Christmas, the ineptness of eating with chopsticks, a lack of understanding of what foods are being referred to because of their Chinese names, and the passion with which they are eaten. Selecting “Hunan Chazer” as the restaurant of choice reflects the irony of Jews eating non-kosher food, called in Yiddish “chazer,” or pig. The boisterousness of the evening is described by the food that kept coming (“The courses kept coming, from spicy to mild, and higher and higher toward the ceiling were piled”), which was contrasted with the boredom they experienced at home on Christmas Eve. The couple’s euphoria is symbolized by the MSG that was present to heighten the couple’s awareness: “The MSG spun round and round in our heads, and we tripped and we laughed ….”

According to Bruce Marcus and Lori Factor-Marcus, “We began Erev Christmas on December 24, 1992 – one year to the day before it was published on the op-ed page of the Boston Globe – on the back of a placemat in a restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown. In those days, the Boston Globe published Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” on the front page every December 24th. That poem was our inspiration; we decided to write a spoof that described how we spent our Christmas Eve…We took some flak for Erev Christmas. After it was published, a few people took us to task for representing non-traditional Jewish dietary habits. Most, however, seemed to take our doggerel in the playful spirit in which it was written. And lastly, when asked if this is a true story (and sometimes even when we are not asked), we explain to folks that we remember there being little or no snow on the ground on Christmas Eve, 1992, and we actually do know how to use chopsticks.” The first performance of the poem by Marcus was at a Jewish Storyteller’s Coalition. Marcus’s performance of “Erev Christmas” has become part of the American Jewish folk tradition through it widespread dissemination by e-mail, print media and YouTube.

Other parodies, including some that have appeared on YouTube, mimic the function of Chinese restaurants to save Jews from being bored on Christmas. In 2006, Brandon Walker composed the enormously popular song “Chinese Food on Christmas,” as reflected by the high number of visits to this YouTube video. In 2006 there were over 583,000 visits to the site while in 2007 there were three times as many and over 2,000 comments. By 2015, the song had 1,900,000 viewings. In the lyrics of his YouTube parody, Brandon wakes up on Christmas day and sees a Christmas tree barren of presents because Santa Claus was not going to appear in a Jewish house. Brandon sings, “What’s a Jew to do on Christmas?” The answer is: “I eat Chinese on Christmas because there ain’t much to do on Christmas.” Once at the restaurant, he joins a band that turns this culinary experience into a Jewish celebration, complete with stereotypical Jewish music, a Jewish wedding dance (lifting the groom off the floor while seated in a chair), and the blowing of the shofar. The song’s music and dance address the depth to which eating Chinese food has become integrated in the American Jewish psyche and how happy Jews are to be immersed in activities on Christmas Eve and Day.

Chapter 3 of A Kosher Christmas: ‘Tis the Season To Be Jewish by Joshua Eli Plaut provides the definitive history of the origin of Jews eating Chinese Food and its evolution into a sacred secular Jewish ritual.